Hi Perl Monks,
I have come before once again begging for your assistance. I have a shell script that I want to run a x number of times (each run is independent of each other) on a dual-cpu machine. However, the current script only uses one cpu and my goal is to use full processing power. In order for me to run 2 processes (each with half the number of total runs and each using one cpu), is fork() my answer? This is the way my code stands now:
for (my $x = 0; $x < $total_number_runs ; $x++) {
    exec("shell_script < input_file");
}

[download]
If fork() is the answer, would this be the type of structure I would use (as recommended by Roy Johnson)?
for my $x (1..$total_number_of_runs) {
    my $pid = fork;
    if (not defined $pid) {
        die("Unable to create child process: $!\n");
    }
    exec("shell_script < $input_file");
}

[download]
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Perl noob

In reply to Is fork() my answer to using dual-cpu? by axl163

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